“Well, when he come in, he sees the pails of milk, and the full wood-box, and the supper laid out under the screen cloth on the kitchen table, and he come up to me at the sink, and says he, ‘Diademy, you’re the best wife in this county, and the brightest jewel in my crown—that’s what you are!’ (He got that idee out of a duet he sings with Almiry Berry.) Now I’d like to know whether that ain’t pleasanter than ’tis to have a man do all the shed ’n’ barn work up smart, and then set round the stove looking as doleful as a last year’s bird’s-nest? Take my advice, Miss Hollis: get a good provider if you can, but anyhow try to find you a husband that’ll keep on courting a little now and then, when he ain’t too busy; it smooths things consid’able round the house.
“There, I got so int’rested in what I was saying, I’ve went on and finished the carnation, and some of the stem, too. Now what comes next? Why, the thing that happened next, of course, and that was little Jot.
“I’ll work in a bud on my rose and one on Lovey’s, and my bud’ll be made of Jot’s first trousers. The goods ain’t very appropriate for a rosebud, but it’ll be mostly covered with green on the outside, and it’ll have to do, for the idee is the most important thing in this rug. When I put him into pants, I hadn’t any cloth in the house, and it was such bad going Jot couldn’t get to Wareham to buy me anything; so I made ’em out of an old gray cashmere skirt, and lined ’em with flannel.”
“Buds are generally the same color as the roses, aren’t they?” ventured Priscilla.
“I don’t care if they be,” said Diadema obstinately. “What’s to hender this bud’s bein’ grafted on? Mrs. Granger was as black as an Injun, but the little Granger children were all red-headed, for they took after their father. But I don’t know; you’ve kind o’ got me out o’ conceit with it. I s’pose I could have taken a piece of his baby blanket; but the moths never et a mite o’ that, and it’s too good to cut up. There’s one thing I can do: I can make the bud with a long stem, and have it growing right up alongside of mine—would you?”
“No, it must be stalk of your stalk, bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh, so to speak. I agree with you, the idea is the first thing. Besides, the gray is a very light shade, and I dare say it will look like a bluish white.”
“I’ll try it and see; but I wish to the land the moths had eat the pinning-blanket, and then I could have used it. Lovey worked the scallops on the aidge for me. My grief! what int’rest she took in my baby clothes! Little Jot was born at Thanksgiving time, and she come over from Skowhegan, where Reuben was settled pastor of his first church. I shall never forget them two weeks to the last day of my life. There was deep snow on the ground. I had that chamber there, with the door opening into this setting-room. Mother and father Bascom kep’ out in the dining-room and kitchen, where the work was going on, and Lovey and the baby and me had the front part of the house to ourselves, with Jot coming in on tiptoe, heaping up wood in the fireplaces so ’t he ’most roasted us out. He don’t forget his chores in time o’ sickness.